BTB #250: Publishing Innovation Awards Gets QED ‘Seal’

Recognizing innovation, usability, user experience and quality design, the Publishing Innovation Awards identify excellence in 21st century digital publishing including e-books, enhanced e-books, and book apps. For the 2012 PIAs, entrants are eligible to receive the new QED seal. Based on a 13-point inspection checklist, awarding of the QED (for Quality, Excellence, and Design) signals an e-book reader that the title will render well in whatever their preferred reading format.

“We’re at a really interesting stage in e-book development. We have a proliferation of kinds of books, and kinds of devices, and kinds of publishers, and it’s just the Wild West,” Anne Kostick, a PIA advisory council member, tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “The QED is intended to create something of a benchmark for quality in a field that really is still all over the place, still very mysterious for purchasers of books.”

“The mission of Digital Book World has always been for practical, optimistic book publishing, both in digital and in print,” explains Matt Mullin, community relations manager at Digital Book World, the awards’ sponsors. “We are very interested in the new things that are being done to create products that are truly digitally native, but also work for the mission of book publishing in general.”